Saturday, May 31, 2014

It's done! The basement bathroom is finally completed!!! We started this project back in November and have worked on it here and there for the past five months. This morning we added the finishing touches and now it's ready to show off!

Friday, May 30, 2014

Last year, our garden turned into a disaster. The boxes were great, but the plants did not do so well. Since I had to water the plants by hand, they ended up not getting enough water, so most of the plants died and the only thing I really got was a million cherry tomatoes. This year, I told Matt that I needed a watering system connected to our secondary water. He was kinda peeved because he suggested that we add a sprinkler/drip system way back when we built the garden, but I knew better and said, "I'll water by hand, its better for the plants..." Needless to say I was wrong and he was right.

Matt was a trooper. He dug trenches (he despises digging trenches, he still has PTSD from digging trenches for our sprinkers) and connected the PVC pipe into our existing secondary sprinkler system.

We based our system on this article Matt found on the USU Extension website. Go HERE to read it. Every four inches he drilled a 1/16 hole into the PVC pipe.

Every three feet, he drilled a drainage hole on the bottom of the pipe.

Matt glued some end caps on the end of the pipes. Or you could add another length of pipe and connect it by elbows to make a square. My mom did her system like that.

Using some pipe, elbows, tees, and a connecter thing (it allows us to be able to disconnect the pipe) he created our garden box sprinkler system.

Matt then glued all the pipes together. He wished he attached more connecter pieces instead of permanently attaching everything. This way the connecter pieces would allow us to adjust and twist the pipe to better aim the water.

This picture was taken before Matt added a valve that would allow us to turn the pressure down. When it waters now, the water doesn't shoot so high in the air.

I spent an afternoon planting corn, pumpkins, cucumbers, tomatoes, basil, watermelon, and pepper. I have one box dedicated for strawberries.

We still have a lot of work to do to finish the garden area. We need to finish a cement boarder, lay more weed guard down (the weed guard we laid last year pretty much disintegrated) and then add some pea gravel. I'm just glad we got this major part done so we can actually grow things!

Fabric Panels:
I also made some fabric panels for each section. I bought cheap twin flat sheets at Wal-Mart for $5 each. You need to buy six flat sheets. I only had five on hand, so I cut one sheet in half and cut up another sheet I had, and added a stripe. What is awesome about using sheets is that the top already has a pocket to slide the pipe through. So all you really need to do is hem the bottom and one side. I also sewed on ties onto each side of the panels. This way I could secure it to the pipes. Out of the sheet scraps, I also made a bag to store the pipes in.

This is how the back, top and bottom, four corners connect into the side walls.

The two sides are cut up into two sections.
section one measures 59.5"
section two measures 37.5"
The booth walls measure 84" tall

The back is cut up into two sections.
Both sections measure 57.5"
The booth walls measure 84" tall

On one end of my booth I have a shelf, on the other end, I have a purse tree. To add extra support to the side walls, I used the ties from the fabric panels, and tied the end PVC pipes to the shelf and purse tree.

These walls are easy to set up and take down. Much better than our last system! I

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Last week was the Simple Treasures Craft Boutique. I created a lot of new product and we designed a better booth set up by using PVC pipe instead of wood. I'll blog a little about that in a later post. I also have a couple of craft tutorials.